


Ghost Town

by Marasa



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Afterlife, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Parenthood, Purgatory, Soft Boys, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:44:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Purgatory is the wasteland where the lost and broken congregate.Josh and Tyler scream the anguish of their deaths and the love they have for each other into the darkness.The cry of an abandoned soul answers them back.





	1. Hometown

It's their anniversary.   
  
Tonight is the perfect night for such a romantic event. The moon glows blurry behind a strip of dark clouds and the wind bites just enough to give them an excuse to be all over each other in public, because...body heat or whatever.   
  
They celebrate their anniversary the same way every year: in reverse.   


The clerk behind the counter is half-asleep and the fluorescent lighting is horrendous. The tiles on the floor are chipped and there's a mop in a bucket of dirty water in the corner that they've seen the past three years.    
  
Josh and Tyler met up at this very gas station for their third ever, got slurpees and made out in the parking lot.   
  
It's the perfect way to start the night.   
  
They're all smiles and obnoxious giggling, fleeting kisses and greedy hands at the soda fountain. They fill up styrofoam cups with sickly green slurpees and suck soft ice through brightly-colored straws that turn to spoons at the end.   
  
A five is thrown on the counter as they drift outside the door all the while laughing as the slurpees give them hilariously painful cases of brain freeze. 

They only laugh harder as Josh pushes Tyler up against the brick wall outside and sucks two bruises onto his neck.   
  
This is the very place where Josh was planning to ask Tyler to be his boyfriend all that time ago.   
  
That one question had been the only thing on his mind that night, right beside how delicious the slurpees were and how even more delicious Tyler’s tongue was.   
  
But Josh had been nervous and unsure and even though he was sure he could do it, he had choked and failed to ask Tyler those few words he so desperately wanted to. 

Their date had ended with that single, unasked question stuck in Josh’s throat. 

Downtrodden and defeated, Josh had walked halfway home as he thought about how even after three dates, he was sure Tyler was his soulmate and that he had completely ruined it by not asking him to be his boyfriend at the end of the night.

There was no one who had ever had his heart like Tyler did. There was no one who understood him like Tyler did.

Josh had never been in love, but he was pretty sure this was it.

At that very realization, he had turned on his heel and sprinted as fast as he possibly could back to where Tyler was walking home in the opposite direction.

Josh, heaving broken breath of overexerted lungs, had fallen hard enough to his knees on the street in front of Tyler for his skin to bruise and bleed through the rips in his jeans.   
  
He had looked up at the wide-eyed man with stained green lips and gasped out those words that had changed everything-  _ ‘Tyler Joseph, will you be my boyfriend?’ _ __  
  
This is the first stop of the night because this is where their relationship began.

“Your tongue is cold,” Tyler snickers, right hand holding his slurpee, left hand buried deep in Josh’s dyed green hair to pull him closer.   


Josh lays the flat of his tongue against each patch of purple forming under his lips because cold feels good against bruises.   
  
The second stop of the night is a tree house hidden away in the forest on the edge of town.   
  
The couple looks up at it from the ground. It's charred, perhaps once on fire in this life or the last. A few wood panels are missing. The nails holding it together are bent and rusted to shit.

It's just as decrepit and broken down as they remembered it being during their second date.

This fact makes it most satisfactory.

Tyler had been the one to suggest the forest for their second date, for he had been the one to discover the strange little house on one of his many exploratory walks. With a smile and quick peck on the cheek, Tyler had led Josh by the hand deep between the crooked trees and dead foliage. 

Tonight, Tyler holds Josh’s slurpee as the green-haired man scales the ladder of small wooden boards hammered into the old trunk. Once he's crawled into the tree house, he takes both slurpees from the man on the ground, deposits them inside and then reaches for him.

He grunts, arms shaking, as he pulls Tyler up mostly with upper body strength alone, Tyler’s flailing feet pushing against the tree being only a little help.

They laugh the entire time.

Inside, it's big enough for both of them to fit but still, it's a little tight. Josh sits against one wall, Tyler sits against the wall across from him. Their legs are bent between them and are laced together like a dirty denim puzzle.   
  
They sip their drinks and giggle about nonsense just like they did they did during their second date. Tyler had broken out a joint during that date and they had smoked themselves into oblivion.   
  
But their current drug dealer recently got a tattoo of a crucifix on the back of his neck and a verse of the Old Testament on his stomach and promptly disappeared. They had seen him a few days before he went MIA and they can confidently say that he had never looked happier.   
  
With that kind of ink on his skin and that peaceful look in his eyes, they don't expect him to ever return.   
  
Their pockets are therefore empty of weed this evening as they seek out a new supplier of reliable drugs. They joke about how they're in between dealers right now until they can find someone with good weed and a mostly permanent sad look in their eyes because here, misery means stability.

They instead share a few kisses to make up for the lack of something hot between their lips.

They throw their finished drinks out of the window of the tree house and come closer until Tyler is half-lying on top of Josh. He brings his lips to Josh’s so he can touch and taste and breathe into his mouth.   
  
It's almost as intoxicating as weed smoke. It's sweet, heady, cold, steaming hot.   
  
Josh’s hand holds the back of Tyler’s head and pulls him closer. His other hand snakes up to Tyler’s nose and promptly squeezes it shut so he has no choice but to breathe through his mouth.   
  
Tyler breathes in. Josh’s mouth goes cold.   
  
Tyler breathes out. Josh’s mouth waters.   
  
Tyler laughs behind Josh’s teeth. Josh laughs too.   
  
Tonight's kissing is different than the second date’s rather shy pecks and slow experimentation. It’s okay, though, because they are always a little unpredictable.   
  
The third and final stop of the night is the place they first met.   
  
Together they scale down the tree house ladder and begin walking deeper into the forest where they know the next location awaits.   
  
The forest is dark but it isn't scary like it had kinda been the night of their first meeting, somehow turned first date. 

The air is quieter, there's no one around. It's peaceful.

The further they travel, the more alone they feel.

Tyler holds Josh’s hand some of the way. Only when he lets go of his fingers does he jump on Josh’s back half-heartedly so Josh can carry him the rest of the way.   
  
It should be a playful gesture but the quiet sanctity in the air saps all the silliness from the action and replaces it with soft tenderness.   
  
They don't say a word. They don't smile or giggle. They simply take in the still feeling of love that swells within them as they near the place they first time they ever saw each other.   
  
Holding hands isn’t enough right now.

They have to be closer together.

Lips rest against Josh’s neck and the warm weight of his boyfriend weighing down on his spine is what they both need as they finally break through the last of the trees.   
  
With cold tongues and stained green lips, they finally end up on the edge of a sunken field.   


This is where they first met three years ago.

The field looks the same as it had that night- littered with traumatic pieces of a thankfully forgotten past.   
  
There are mutilated motorcycles rusting away in overgrown grass below them. There are empty shotguns and razors and hospital beds and other things that beget all of their sour demises that left them broken and unready to completely pass on.   
  
Purgatory- they say it's where you go when the universe doesn't know where to put you.   
  
They all have trouble remembering who they were when they were alive. They all have trouble remembering how they died. The sun never shines here and there is no chance for finding their way as long as their souls are wayward.   
  
Purgatory is the wasteland where the lost and broken congregate.   
  
And they both had been so broken as they stood on the edge of the field that one fateful night so long ago.

Tyler had been standing here in this field, body still bruised with the trauma that had sent him here. Josh had stood amazed at the sight of the man in the middle of this wreckage of lives lost, something in his heart and soul changing as the other had finally turned to him.

“What are you doing here?” Josh had asked the stranger who wore a black eye, a split lip and bruises all up and down his arms.   
  
“Screaming,” Tyler had said.   
  
“At what?”   
  
“Everything.”   
  
Then he had turned his back to the tattooed man, looked out over the field, inhaled a deep breath into his bruised lungs and screamed as loud as he possibly could.   
  
Josh can remember so clearly just how deeply those screams brimmed with anguish and torture and anxiety but also just as much consisted of passion and defiance and bravery for whatever came next in this strange place.   
  
Beautiful, hurt and strong- Josh fell in love that night.   
  
Then he had come closer, stood beside the man and then had screamed at everything too.   
  
Gasping for breath, Josh had turned to him. “What's your name?”   
  
“Tyler.”   
  
“I'm Josh.”   
  
“Hi, Josh.”   
  
“Hi, Tyler.”   
  
Tyler had cradled own jaw with bruised fingers so his hand covered the patch of violet that stretched from just under his ear down to his chin.   
  
The sun never shone but in the moonlight reflected in Tyler’s eyes, Josh could see a fire deep in the pits of his pupils that glew brighter than he remembered the sun ever shining back when he was alive.   
  
“Do things get better here, Josh?” Tyler had asked with his palm still covering his hurt.   
  
A pause. A soft smile.   
  
“I really don't know,” Josh had said and Tyler believed him.   
  
Here, three years later, their lips move against each other, hot breath on their tongues and a teasing scrape of teeth against their bottom lips.   
  
That fire’s still there; it's only gotten stronger. It feels like coals behind their skin, like they're hellions in love.   
  
“I love you, Tyler,” Josh sighs against Tyler’s lazy tongue.   
  
Tyler smiles. “When's the first time you knew you loved me?”   
  
“The minute you screamed at the entire world.”   
  
Josh kisses at his jaw, Tyler smiling, laughing breathlessly, weaving his fingers in his dyed green hair.   
  
“God, I love you, Josh.”   
  
The wind trickles chilly down their arms as they pull back from each other. Their bruise-less fingers lock together tightly. A brief peck once more, another smile.   
  
It's their anniversary and they always end the night like this.   
  
Hand in hand, they take in deep breaths, face the open field of hurt and death and scream as loud as they can because they love each other.   
  
“AHHH!!!”   
  
“AHHH!!!”   
  
They're almost doubled over, almost falling apart with the perfection that is being in each other’s presence. This must be what it is like to have found your soulmate, Josh thinks as his lungs feel like they'll surely collapse.   
  
Their screams taper off, their anguish and love racing across the field and fading away in the ring of towering trees, where they echo almost endlessly.   
  
They smile, they pant, their fingers cling tight to each other because their hands together are the only thing keeping them grounded.   
  
Silence follows, just like every other year.   
  
What is unexpected, however, is that deep in the field of death, a tiny cry answers them.   
  
They stand upright slowly. They turn to each other with utmost care. The furrow of their brows only gets deeper as the cry is heard again.   
  
It's a foreign sound, a rare sound. The couple looks at each other in disbelief and denial, begging each other quietly that surely what they've heard is not what they think it is.   
  
They're all high on sugary drinks and each other's lips and the lack of oxygen previously screamed out from the bottom of their lungs- they don't know anything.   
  
Another cry crawls across the field to them and there is no more declaring ignorance.   
  
Before they can process it, they’re moving down the hill and into the pit of sadness, feet sliding like they're skiing on sickness.   
  
They follow the cries over burnt tires and knots of nooses until they come to a stop in front of a small pile of junk in the very center of the field.   
  
The high-pitched sound could maybe be a child’s toy buried at the bottom of this pile of rubble; Josh thinks perhaps someone slipped on it back when they were alive, cracked their head open on the hardwood floor and bled out before they could ever think of calling for help.   
  
The denial and embarrassment would keep them from moving on and would instead ensure their stay here in a place they sometimes thought was worse than Hell.   
  
Another wailing cry sounds just under a sheet of metal leaning against a battered refrigerator. The sound reverberates the material until it's buzzing with an energy that rivals their own just moments ago.   
  
The couple swallows roughly as they look at each other.

They had learned quickly that this place was unpredictable. Tyler had been here three years, Josh five, and still, each day was a new lesson in something supernatural and strange.

The water from the faucets had turned to fire for a day and a half once. The sky had turned to a neon purple for a week. Their speech had been rendered backwards for a whole month.

The men are seldom knowledgeable in sign language as a result.

Tonight, they were wishing to be apart from the strangeness of Purgatory so they could enjoy their anniversary but it’s just like this place to throw whatever this is at them.   
  
Carefully, they each grab a corner of the cold sheet of metal. They pull it back.   
  
“What the fuck,” they say in perfect unison.   
  
On the cold ground, in a sea of tools of death, lays a naked infant with dark hair and tear-stained cheeks. His little legs kick and his hands are balled up into fists, curled up by his head.   
  
He looks as upset as anyone to be in this place.   
  
They're overtaken with shock at the initial revelation but are kicked into gear when he draws in a deep breath and screeches brokenly once again. 

They wince; without the metal barrier between them, his screams shake their eardrums.   
  
“Good lungs on ‘im, huh?” Josh says, teeth gritted, eyes squinting up at the painful sound.

There are hypodermic needles and prescription pill bottles all around the baby. Tyler is careful to avoid them as he picks up the screeching infant.

His lips are a little blue as are his toes and fingers. His cries come out choppy and strange with how hard he's shivering.   
  
“Josh, he's freezing,” Tyler says, sounding mildly panicked.   
  
The tiny stranger screeches in heartbreaking discomfort against the cold wind.   
  
Josh doesn't wait another moment before shedding his shirt and helping Tyler wrap it around the whiny baby. The dark material is still warm with his body heat and does well to begin to thaw the small human.   
  
“Shh, shh,” Tyler shushes shakily as he begins to rock the wailing child wrapped up in a Black Flag shirt.   
  
The wind blows cold. They look at the kid, at the empty field all around them, the sky. No one is here.   
  
“Hello?!” Josh yells into the emptiness of the messy field. “You left your baby over here! Hello?!”   
  
No one answers. There's not even a hint of movement anywhere, not even in the edges of the trees.   
  
The couple looks at each other. They look to the baby.   
  
Wrapped up in Josh’s t-shirt and safe against Tyler’s chest, the baby is finally beginning to calm down. All the shivering and crying has surely worn him out as he's hiccuping and whining lightly, but the worst is done.   
  
Already, the color is beginning to come back to his lightly blue face. The quieter it gets, the faster reality sets in.   
  
“What are we going to do?” Josh whispers.   
  
The police aren't an option because in the afterlife, law enforcement is impossible when there is no law. Everyone's dead already, so what's the point?   
  
The closest thing they have are shadowy figures not even human that float above the streets, buzzing as lowly as the power lines.   
  
Tyler found a picture of them in an old religious text at the bottom of a ravine once when they had been out skateboarding.   
  
Tyler didn't like to skateboard but he liked to watch Josh because he loves him and that's how love worked- you suddenly care about shit you never cared about before because it brings a heavenly smile to your significant other’s face.   
  
Torn pages and tattered binding, Tyler had seen through the film of char and dirt and had concluded it must be a book of instructions for the dead.   
  
It wasn’t much help though, not when the entire book was in another language neither of them knew but there were sketches. Smudged, shadowy figures flying through the air took up pages six through eight.   
  
_ Custodes Animarum. _   
  
They didn’t completely understand their purpose, just understood that those nonhuman entities were always above them somewhere, watching.

Sadly, on the other pages, there were no words or sketches of a police force or a phone number to call when one needed help.   
  
Tyler jokes that there shouldn't be an emergency button on the dial pad of any of the landline phones around town because there's no such thing as help here.   
  
Josh laughs because the phones don’t work anyway.

There is no help for them or the tiny child left abandoned in this literally God-forsaken place.   
  
“We can't leave him here,” Tyler says. “He’ll die if we leave him here.”   
  
The scariest part is that if you die in the afterlife, they don't know where the fuck you go. They assume that was the part of the book that had been torn out of the book Tyler had found.   
  
The baby scrunches up his face and hiccups a broken cry.   
  
It's not even a question; they can't leave him here.   
  
Josh looks over at his boyfriend, his lover, the man who has had his heart for officially three years and sees in Tyler’s eyes the determination and passion he fell in love with.   
  
“We won't leave him here,” Josh says. “We’ll find who he belongs to.”   
  
It's their anniversary and this is not how they expected it to happen but there’s not much they can do to avoid the strangeness that overwhelms this place.

Josh sighs. Tyler shakes his head in disbelief. 

Nothing surprises them anymore after tonight, Josh thinks.   
  
“Happy anniversary, Tyler,” Josh says.

Tyler turns to him. “Happy anniversary, Joshua.”   
  
The moon, currently swelling and deflating in the sky as if it were breathing, shines down on the two now turned three. With the child still in his arms, Tyler steps closer to the love of his afterlife and connects their foreheads together.   
  
“I love you,” Tyler says with warm breath reminiscent of a green slurpee fanning his lips.   
  
Josh smiles and presses closer. “I love you.”   
  
They share a kiss in the field they first met three years ago.   
  
The wind blows cold.   
  
The baby cradled in Tyler’s arms sleeps soundly between their chests.


	2. Chasing Shadows

The question of where this kid’s parents are may be a little harder than they initially thought.

They’re in the middle of a ghost town (no pun intended) of dilapidated buildings and quiet, creepy streets. There is no sign of any worried mother or father wandering up and down the street looking for their son.

There’s no sign of movement usually. It’s all out of the corner of one’s eye, each street literally haunted.

“Tyler, where the fuck do we go?” Josh sighs as he looks around the still landscape bathed in moonlight. “We’re not gonna find them if they’re not even out.”

“Yeah, maybe they’re not.” Tyler nods to the left of the street and Josh is following his gaze.

The bar is in the same state as every other building. It looks abandoned even though it's one of the more frequently used establishments in town. The lights don't work on the outside and only a few work inside. They can see a few sleepy shadows drift just behind the cloudy windows.

Their shoes crunch on loose gravel as they make their way across the empty parking lot and to the front door.

Josh opens it. A cloud of cigarette smoke rushes out into their faces

On instinct, Tyler turns away from the door and holds the baby closer to his chest, effectively shielding the infant’s face from the smoke with his hand.

“We’ll wait out here, actually,” Tyler says with a small cough and a look back at his boyfriend of officially three years.

Josh gives a quick nod before stepping into the dark hole of tobacco smoke.

He nearly chokes at the fiery atmosphere inside. He smokes, Tyler does too, but this is heavily concentrated beyond the point he thought was possible. It’s heavy in his sinuses and against his eyes, making them burn with every blink. 

The few neon lights hanging on the walls glow a great span through the smoke hanging in the air so the air turns pink and blue. 

Josh blinks his eyes against every rotten stimulus and looks around.

It's not necessarily busy, maybe eleven people in total not including the bartender.

Some are talking. Some are passed out in booths. There's a game of billiards playing out near the back. The cue sticks are broken, the velvet’s ripped and the eight ball is missing but they players don't seem bothered by much of anything.

Josh clears his throat as much as he can of wayward smoke and yells out for their attention.

“Hey!”

Not one of them looks up.

“Yo, listen up!”

Not a move.

Josh groans, knowing exactly what they want. One quickly learns just how residents of the afterlife function when there is, in affect, nothing to live for anymore.

This place runs on selfishness and the pursuit of happiness in ways of getting what one wants. The old drunks and subsequent members of the church that denounced their religion will say if only those fuckers on Earth prayed for them a little more would they be out of this shithole.

Doesn’t matter that they don’t remember or ever care about those on Earth themselves. It’s all about what they want.

Josh marches over to the counter and pulls out a two fives and seven ones from his pocket. He throws them on dirty wood and growls out through gritted teeth, “A drink for everyone, please.”

A rusted bell on the wall rings out crookedly as the smirking bartender whips the string on it back and forth. The whole place suddenly comes alive to the sound. 

The billiards game is no longer important. Conversations are forgotten. Even the ones previously sleeping are instantly awake and stumbling over with their arms outstretched to overflowing glasses.

That bell is the only thing that gets their attention and now Josh has it as they're all satiated with their drinks. They’re looking at the shirtless man expectantly.

“Have any of you misplaced a baby?” Josh asks.

The answer is unanimous, spoken all in one voice. “No.”

And that’s it. There is no discussion, just the worst answer Josh could expect. They’ve already completely forgotten about him as they guzzle their shitty beer and light some more cigarettes, one woman by the door smoking three at once. 

When he passes her to leave out the door, Josh can see on the length of each of them just above the filter, a single cross drawn in marker.

The sound of Josh’s shoes on gravel has Tyler looking up from the baby in his arms, stopping his discreet swaying and bouncing.

“What'd they say?” Tyler asks.

“Nothing,” Josh says shortly, “but we’re out of seventeen dollars.”

Tyler doesn't ask and it's probably for the best.

Not more than two minutes from the bar is a shitty apartment building. The first five floors are in tact but the remaining eight floors are no longer attached to the ground.

Each floor is a slice of disconnected pipes and brick, each staggered layer their own island floating far above the ground. They’re weightless as if there is a magnetic field holding them up. A few single bricks float in their atmosphere.

It is debated on whether or not there are people still inside the apartments on floors six to thirteen.

“Like a video game,” Tyler will say when they’re taking a walk together after ingesting a weed cookie late in the evening some time during the memory of fall, “or a sci-fi movie or a modern art piece.”

“A good one?” Josh will ask and Tyler will shrug and talk about how that cookie they had is really moving through him and dude, take watch while I shit on the side of the road right outside of the floating apartment building.

It’s not even strange anymore because it’s always been like this and they can not remember a time when it wasn’t. Much of the stuff around here can be thought of the same way.

This time, no smoke attacks them as Josh opens the doors, nothing but a breath of dust and mildew. 

Tyler steps in first, Josh follows.

A man is sitting not behind the front desk but in a red plastic chair beside it. He looks down at a tattered comic book in his lap and does not look up to greet them.

If he’s not behind the desk, is he even in charge here?

“Excuse me,” Tyler says. The guy looks up, black eye and greasy forehead.

“Huh?”

“Has anyone here lost a baby?”

He blinks. “Nuh.”

And then he’s back to looking down at his lap, flipping to the next page printed with what looks to be a superhero killing an army of skeletons.

The couple looks to each other with the silent question of whether or not they should pursue their question. They ultimately roll their eyes and decide to forget it with this guy.

They walk out the door into the darkness of night but not before spotting a piece of paper tacked to the wall reading,  _ NO SHITTING ON THE LAWN. USE THE FUCKING TOILET, HEATHENS _

“Heathen,” Josh whispers to Tyler with a devilish smirk on his face once they’re out the door. The other man elbows him as best he can with a sleeping infant in his arms.

Down the empty street they go, seeing no one else and hearing no one crying out for their lost child. Their eyes scan for any building that is usually inhabited so they inquire inside but there has yet to be one after five minutes of walking.

“I’m starting to think they’re not even looking for him,” Josh says. He doesn’t miss the way Tyler holds the kid just a little tighter.

“Don’t say that, dude,” Tyler chides quietly. “Fucking depressing.”

“Sorry.”

It’s quiet until Tyler shifts his arms and looks down, craning his head to try and see underneath his right arm where the sleeping baby’s bottom rests against his forearm. Then, Josh realizes what’s happening.

“No!” Josh says, eyes wide as he cranes with Tyler. “Is he pissing on my shirt?! Please don't say he's shitting!”

Tyler just hums in consideration and continues to look this way and that in the folds of the black shirt wrapped around him.

“Tyler!”

“I don't think he's doing either, Josh. Thought I felt something.” Tyler looks up with a smile. “False alarm.”

Josh sighs in relief.

“Don't fucking scare me like that, dude.”

“Payback for not spotting me better that night,” Tyler says with a wink. 

Josh just huffs and shakes his head.

“Should probably pick up some diapers, though, before I actually do feel something,” Tyler says.

They spot a convenience store at the end of the street. They ask the teens drinking outside the door if any of them have lost a baby or if they know anyone who has. They all say no and request for the couple to buy them some more liquor.

“Little young, aren’t you?” Josh says as he holds the door open for his boyfriend.

The shortest points to himself violently. “I’ve been dead for thirty-four fucking years.”

He points to the guy to his left. “He’s been dead for twenty-seven.”

He points to the girl on his right. “She’s been dead nineteen.”

“Oh,” Josh says before following after his boyfriend without anything more than a look of brief embarrassment at their collective scowling.

They walk the lengths of each poorly stocked aisle in search for what they need. They’re met with open chip bags overflowing with roaches, a melted Drumstick on the floor near the back, two whole aisles stocked with nothing but pickles.

“Garlic, Sweet and Spice, Bread and Butter,” Tyler reads as they shuffle down the aisle. 

“Do you really need these many flavors?” Josh says.

“Something for everyone,” Tyler says. “Wanna know which flavor’s my favorite?”

Josh hums.

Tyler takes a few steps ahead him, stops, turns and gently raises his foot so he can point to the front of his boyfriend’s pants with the tip of his ratty Vans. “That flavor.”

“Shut up,” Josh chuckles.

Near the back past dusty can of food and bent packages of gum, they find a small box of diapers. Thankfully, it has yet to be eaten through by rats.

In the afterlife, one might need such a product. Well, not just anyone- mothers and fathers who happened to have died with their child.

Time works differently here or maybe it doesn’t work at all. Those kids outside don’t look a day over sixteen but they’ve been here longer than Josh or Tyler has. The baby with them might be hundreds of years old but there’s no way they’d know- no one ages here.

They’re frozen at the age of their death, their trauma, forever reminded of who they were when they left the Earth. Some are more bitter about it than others.

Babies are a money pit on Earth, but more so here.

Everyone makes barely enough money to live. They scavenge and steal and struggle to stay alive despite the fact they’re dead. Mothers with unaging infants will forever be condemned to buy diapers and formula and whatever else the hell babies need with the little money they have.

Sucks.

Good thing Tyler and Josh only have to do it for a little while.

Josh picks up the box and shows it to Tyler as if he would know what they’re looking at but both of them are pretty much oblivious when it comes to children. They share a confused look but shrug together. They guess it’ll do.

“Ten fifty-seven,” the clerk drones.

“Ten dollars?!” Josh exclaims. “Fuckin’ made of gold? They better change themselves with a price like that!”

The clerk just blinks up at the shirtless man, looking so bored. There’s a scar across his neck and a spot on the upper left of his forehead that looks like a bullet hole of scar tissue.

None of them know how they died but some of them have an idea.

Josh hacks up eleven dollars bitterly and is given a light handful of change that just clutters up his pockets.

With a box of diapers tucked under his right arm and his boyfriend holding a stranger’s baby under his left, the kids outside cackle. 

“‘Ten dollars, ten dollars?!’” they mock with nasty laughs. “Get fucked in Hell, asshole!”

Both Tyler and Josh spit grossly in their direction at that. 

Just as they get back on the road, the baby starts to squirm in Tyler’s arms, face scrunching up as he begins to wake.

“Shit.” Tyler looks to the side of the road where an abandoned car is tucked away in a patch of overgrown grass. “Over there, Josh.”

They hurry over to the car and stop in front of it, trying to shift around the kid.

Josh helps Tyler unwrap his band shirt from around the naked infant and lays it on the car hood, conscious of how filthy and so very cold the metal is. Josh opens the box and retrieves a single diaper as the baby screeches.

It’s all very chaotic and disorienting and adds to their shared confusion at how to do this.

“Follow the instructions on the back,” Tyler says as he turns around the box on the hood. “Look.”

Tyler is the one to take the diaper from his hands and attempt his best. It’s like a puzzle of sticky tabs and leg holes and other shit. 

It's a chaotic conversation of crying and hurried hisses of ‘ _ dude, it's not rocket science!’  _ and ‘ _ should it be this hard or are we just stupid?’ _

They both are biting their tongues and furrowing their brows as they try to make sure everything is fitted and tightened just right so it doesn't slip off of him.

“Did we do it?” Josh says as a finally diapered baby kicks his legs and cries pathetically up at them.

Tyler wipes the few drops of sweat from his forehead. “I think so.”

The baby chokes on his cries, uncomfortable on the cold car hood. They pair sigh.

“Oh, why are you so upset?” Tyler actually coos as he wraps the baby up in Josh’s shirt again and picks him back up. “You have a diaper on now. You're free to piss and shit anywhere you please. You should be crying tears of joy!”

As soon as the baby’s in Tyler’s arms, his cries begin to quiet. It’s warm, safe, in the arms of Josh’s boyfriend. The baby’s fingers curl by his head where they rest just outside the loose wrap of the shirt.

His little brown eyes are already beginning to droop, lips parting as he falls asleep once again.

“Tyler, I don’t know where to go from here,” Josh says as he joins Tyler’s gaze down to the baby. “No one around here has lost a kid.”

“Who would know if someone lost a kid?” Tyler says. “Who’s all up in everyone’s fuckin’ business and would know?”

There’s a pause as they think and then they’re looking slowly up at each other, eyes wide and the starts of smiles on their faces.  They answer in unison. 

“Jenna.”


	3. Bug

“Oh my God, what are you doing here?”

Jenna is already rolling her eyes from behind the counter as soon as Josh walks inside the thrift store.

It’s criminally small, simply a closet that holds this realm’s most valuable trash. Towers of clothing and crumbling electronics touch the ceiling stained with centuries of water damage. 

At least half the entire inventory has been sold to Jenna by the couple.

It's their primary source of income. 

They scavenge for anything of worth around town and sell it to the woman behind the counter. All of it is from the past, surely, some of it too personalized to be entirely coincidence.

Busted televisions, old cameras, sticker sets, stamp collections, weathered toys.

It’s junk full of memories just out of reach.

“Isn't it your anniversary?” Jenna asks, ignoring Josh’s shirtless state. “‘Is it’? Of course I know it is; it's all Tyler’s been talking to me about for weeks.  _ Annoying _ .”

Jenna is as scary as the Custodes that stalk the skies. Long blonde hair, a strong hand and a glare that demands no bullshit- Josh saw her knock out three perverts outside of the bar when they got a little too handsy.

The thrift store owner faces the whole of Purgatory with an intimidating firmness dire enough to make every passerby tremble.

All except Tyler.

Yeah, she still gave him a hard time occasionally, or maybe most of the time, but for whatever reason, she was gentler Tyler. She never once has properly yelled at him or fought with him. What she would never tolerate from others, she tolerates with Tyler.

She lets him pay in IOUs when money is tight and actually allows him to sit on the front counter when no one else is in the store. She lets him get away with talking her ear off about stupid shit like the dreams he keeps having, the dogs he likes at the landfill and stories about his and Josh’s sex life.

In a world of strangers, Jenna and Tyler are very best friends.

Whatever they felt for each other was something so unique and so their own that Josh had to simply admire it. 

Josh knows Jenna loves Tyler. 

Maybe not in the same way he did but there were plenty of different types of love.

She flips through the ratty magazine open on the counter in front of her. The pages are wrinkled and torn and stained with something he can’t quite identify completely. Coffee? Old mustard?

“Where is he anyway?” Jenna asks without looking up.

Tyler’s here. He’s walking through the door now with an unsure shuffle and a bundle of baby wrapped in Josh’s shirt in his arms. 

Jenna’s patience dwindles at Josh’s sudden muteness.

“Are you going to give me an explanation for why you’re here on your anniversary or do you just want to waste my time like you usually do?”

She looks up from her magazine to glare at Josh expectantly. She follows his nervous gaze over to the door where her best friend stands.

Her eyes go wide.

“Oh shit.”

Tyler gives her a shy smile as he readjusts his arms under the baby, bracing himself for the reprimand that is surely coming.

Five, four, three, two...

“What did you two do!?”

There it is.

“Nothing!” Josh says, panic increasing as Jenna’s own panic does.

“You stole a baby!”

“Saved,” Tyler corrects.

Jenna whips her head back to him. “Saved?”

“We were having our anniversary date,” Josh begins, “just hanging out like we do every year and then out of nowhere, we heard him crying in a field.”

“He was alone,” Tyler says as he comes closer, voice so vaguely solemn that it could be missed but Josh picks up on it. “Naked, under a heap of garbage and laying in needles.”

Tyler clears his throat quietly as he shakes his head a little. “We couldn't leave him like that, Jenna.”

“Where are his parents?” Jenna demands, steering the conversation from emotions back to facts.

“We’re trying to find them,” Josh says.

Jenna scoffs. “Yeah, okay. And if you can’t?”

“That’s not an option,” Josh says gruffly. “We’re going to find them. Unless you want to take him.”

“What?!” She shakes her head. “Uh, no. A hundred times no. No no no no no no no. That’s why you came tonight? To put him off on me?”

“We were wondering if you’ve heard anything about someone missing a baby,” Tyler says. “We don’t have any leads.”

There’s a pause that has them holding their breaths in suspense. Jenna taps the magazine with her trimmed fingernails. She looks between them, back and forth, back and forth. Finally, she speaks:

“What have you two gotten yourselves into?”

Josh groans, collapsing forward on the counter only for as long as Jenna lets him before pushing at his head firmly.

“You could always leave him where you found him,” she says. 

It’s Tyler now that speaks up. He holds the baby closer in response without realizing it. His fingers twitch and spread atop the bundle of Josh’s shirt as if to create a barrier.

“No.” Tyler’s tone is serious. “That's not an option.”

The response is slightly confusing for Josh, not the whole part of refusing to abandon a child in a field, but the part where he sounds mildly...protective.

“Then you're stuck with him,” Jenna says. “I don't know what to tell you.”

Silence falls over them for a brief moment as they all try to think this out. It’s only interrupted by a whine from the baby currently sucking on his own fist.

“When’s the last time he ate?”

The men look at Jenna, then at each other.

“Guys!”

“Don't yell at us!” Tyler says. “We don't know how to do this!”

Jenna sighs. She taps the counter as she thinks for a moment.

“I’ll hold him while you two go look around and grab some stuff, okay? Bottles, clothes, anything you think you’ll need.”

“He’s not ours,” Josh insists. “We don’t need all that stuff; we’re not keeping him. Plus, what? You think we have that kind of money?”

“He  _ is _ yours until you find who he belongs to,” Jenna says sternly. “And I’ll give you a discount. Waste any more of my time and you can forget it.”

Tyler looks to Josh, who finally gives him a defeated nod after a long period of defiance. Tyler steps forward and deposits the baby in the woman’s awaiting arms. 

The child looks up at her with big brown eyes. His thin hair is feathered in a natural mohawk down the center of his head. The color has returned to his face as warmth pumps from the vents in the thrift store and from the warm embraces of Tyler and now Jenna.

She actually smiles. 

“I got him,” Jenna softly assures Tyler who is hovering nearby, wringing his fingers together. “Go ahead and get what you need.”

The couple ventures deeper into the store past rusted file cabinets stuffed with wrinkled paperwork of unknown people and dusty books stacked in teetering towers.

They stop in a messy aisle crowded with clothes and toys and Josh feels inclined to question Tyler about his sudden strange behavior now that they’re alone.

He nudges Tyler’s shoulder. 

Tyler looks up from where he scans the shelf in front of him for anything of use.

“Everything okay?”

Tyler initially nods but the action quickly dissolves into an uncertain shrug. 

“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Tyler repeats Jenna’s words that have been rotating in Josh’s head ever since she’s said them. “What if we don’t find his parents? What if this is too much for us?”

“It'll be okay, Tyler,” Josh assures his love, even when he isn’t sure what he’s saying is true. He leans down to brush a kiss against his boyfriend’s lips. “We’ll be okay.”

Tyler nods against him, kissing him back just a little warmer, a little hotter.

He bites Josh’s bottom lip and tugs suggestively. Tyler smirks when his boyfriend follows the movement with a quiet moan.

“I want to make love to you tonight,” Josh breathes against his pillowy, spit-slicked lips. “Or is sex off the table right now?”

Tyler sighs, pats his boyfriend’s cheek. “Given the current situation, yes, I think sex is the least of our worries.”

“Fuck.”

They smile against each other despite the disappointment of no sex tonight. They kiss a few more times, hands barely sliding under shirts and across hips, lips parting, licking softly, gently sucking.

“If you don't stop that right now and start shopping, I'm going to kick you out.”

They ultimately pull away from each other and begrudgingly turn to the shelves in front of them because they know Jenna’s not bluffing.

Tyler looks through the rows of tattered books and journals thrown haphazardly on the shelf. He almost exclaims in victory as he pulls out a weathered book titled, ‘ _ A New Mother’s Guide to Parenting. _ ’

Josh looks over his shoulder as he flips through the yellowing pages. There are illustrations of how to swaddle a baby and the proper way to hold them. Long paragraphs explain what to eat and not eat during pregnancy, when to feed an infant, what was normal behavior, what was not.

“He’ll need clothes,” Tyler says as he skims down a master list of items a baby requires located at the back of the book, “bottles, a pacifier, socks and...a lot of other stuff.”

Josh sighs.

They start searching.

This place is so completely crowded with junk that finding the desired items is like searching for dust balls in a landfill. But Josh and Tyler are a team.

They’ve been a team ever since they’ve met. Whatever shit they get into, they’re in it together completely. This situation they find themselves in is daunting, but maybe it’s not as different as any other obstacle they’ve encountered.

They’re a team now as they scour the mess that surrounds them for what is needed.

They find baby pajamas under a speaker. They find a beanie for an infant beside a pile of roller skates. They find one sock in the pocket of a leather jacket and the other in the trunk of a toy car.

“Look at this one.” Tyler holds up a simply black onesie painted with a skeleton body that he's found under an open lawn chair at the end of the aisle.

“Focus, Tyler,” Josh says as he pulls a small jacket from between two vases.

“I am, I am.”

Tyler ends up draping the Halloween costume over his forearm as he continues searching.

The two men finish their scavenger hunt with exactly five onesies, three pairs of mismatched socks, two hats, a tiny pair of sweatpants, a jacket and a blanket for the kid. They also find one blue pacifier and an unopened pack of six individual bottles painted with planets and astronauts.

They high-five before returning to the register to pay.

“He's so well-tempered,” Jenna says as they set the items down on the counter. She rocks the baby a little while he grunts and bites at his slobbery fist. “Not a single cry.”

“You should've heard him when we first found him,” Josh says, exasperated. “My ears are still ringing.”

Jenna actually laughs.

Josh finds it both amazing and frustrating that she's accepted a baby she's only known for fifteen minutes into her exclusive club of people she’s actually kind to.

Josh has known her for a few years and they bicker quite frequently. The stranger in her arms has broken down her intimidating resolve to one of warm kindness.

It's just another unexpected shock of the night.

“He is cute,” Jenna says, surprising the couple with her uncharacteristic admission. “Look at how thick his eyelashes are. And his hair-”

She shakes her head fondly as she strokes the baby’s mohawk hair. She looks up at Josh with a teasing smile. 

“Are you sure this isn't your kid?”

Josh’s stomach twists. His chest tightens.

“He's not mine,” Josh murmurs much too serious in tone for the light conversation.

Jenna narrows her eyes briefly at Josh, as if analyzing him. Her gaze makes him feel vulnerable. Josh has to fight the instinct to cower or cross his arms and hide.

“Here.” 

Jenna doesn't break her gaze from him as she tries to pass over the baby to him. Immediately, he’s taking a step back and averting his eyes to the side. 

Josh holds his breath. His whole body is rigid. He's so clearly uncomfortable.

Tyler steps in to take the baby instead.

As soon as he is in Tyler’s arms, the baby is huffing little breaths and grunts in perceived excitement. Tyler tries to calm him down by cooing quiet hellos to him while the baby looks up at him in elation.

Jenna’s expression as she watches Tyler is soft, understanding. 

Whatever shimmers in her eyes causes Josh’s anxiety to grow.

“What are you going to call him?” 

Josh furrows his brow. 

“Call him?” Josh says. “For the last time- we are not keeping him, Jenna. We don't have to call him anything.”

“Then how the hell are you supposed to talk about him, Josh?”

“I don't know! Do we need to talk about him!?” 

The volume is normal for them; it's how Jenna and Josh communicate. It is not, however, normal for the infant in Tyler’s arms.

All the commotion and the seemingly angry tone of voice coming from the both of them has the baby scrunching up his face and crying weakly.

In a single moment, Tyler goes from engaged in their hectic conversation to completely focused on calming the upset child in his arms.

“Shh,” Tyler shushes softly, beginning to rock him. “I know they're loud, but it's okay, shh, shh.”

Josh watches his boyfriend murmur and coo with a certain instinct that simply does not come to himself naturally at all. It looks effortless. Josh has never seen his boyfriend like this.

It's confusing. All of this is confusing. 

He looks to Jenna for support but all she gives him is a look that says that their previous conversation is far from over.

Josh groans.

“What's the answer you want, Jenna?” Josh urges, voice quieter now but still as firm. “‘Baby,’ ‘The Baby,’ ‘The Kid.’ We’ll call him something like that, I don't know. Generic.”

They look down at the baby. They look up at Tyler.

“Tyler?”

The other man hums in quiet consideration as he looks down at the baby. 

Then, Tyler smiles gently.

“B.”

The softness with which Tyler speaks is so surprising that Josh is rendered still for a moment.

“B,” Josh says. “As in…’baby.’”

“‘I was thinking more like, ‘Bug,’” Tyler clarifies.

“Bug,” Josh repeats just as soft. 

It's generic, not at all personal. It's not even a name.

The little bug gives a tiny grunt and yawns, as if he were giving sleepy agreement to his new name. Tyler smiles brightly and Josh wants to remind him that the point of a non-name like this is to not get attached. 

“He does look a little like a grub,” Jenna says in amusement.

“A human grub bug,” Tyler coos down to the tiny human who looks up at him with already a shocking amount of trust.

Whatever this is is big. Josh doesn't know why but that's just how he feels about the situation. He didn't sign up for any of this but here they are, buying supplies and clothes and this feels too big for them to handle.

Josh furrows his brow. He frowns.

He looks to Jenna and her expression says that she feels for him.

“Don't worry about it,” Jenna says as Josh begins to pull out whatever few bills left in his pocket. 

Tyler steps forward. “No, Jenna, let us-”

“It's your anniversary. You're obviously dealing with a lot.” Jenna smiles softly at her best friend, then to the baby in his arms. “It's on me this time, as long as you promise to go buy this baby some formula right now and feed him.”

Both men thank her sincerely. They're so grateful, they might actually start crying. They're so scared about this situation that they might start crying anyway. 

Jenna must spot that fear and confusion in Josh’s eyes again because she's laying her hand over his where it rests on the counter. She gives him a gentle smile, squeezes his fingers.

“I’m always here to help you two,” Jenna says. “You’re my best friends. Don’t hesitate to come by ever, okay?”

Josh is stricken dumb by her affection. He finds himself staring uselessly at her as Tyler leans over the counter and kisses her cheek quickly.

“Now get out,” Jenna says with a smirk. “I’m serious this time.”

Josh holds the door for Tyler on their way out. He doesn't miss the quick glance Jenna gives him full of compassion and something else he can't quite read before leaving.

“Let’s go to the store up the street for formula,” Tyler announces, starting off in the direction of the store not too far from their trailer. He steps through dead grass and back on the road. “Then we’ll go home.”

“Home,” Josh murmurs half-heartedly as he follows after his lover.

The night air feels good against his heated skin but Josh can't shake the anxiety rising within himself.

When he sighs in exhaustion and nervousness, Tyler doesn't press him about it. 

Josh is so thankful that he doesn't, he just might cry.


End file.
